UK High energy usage!

[RapsterUK]

Hi all, trying to work out what's using so much electricity in our house. It's an average 3 bedroom mid terrace house, 2 adults and 3 young kids. Our electric bills have been very high recently and state we're using an average of 35kWh per day! From looking online, the average is 8-10 a day. I've bought a usage monitor to try and see what the hell is going on. Our heating is warm air heating, so all gas apart from the control unit. Out water is heated by an immersion heater with thermostat, so probably not the cheapest method, but I've already eliminated this by turning it of overnight and still seeing over 3KWh of usage between midnight and 6am! With no major appliances on (cooker, tumble dryer or immersion heater) I'm seeing around 600-700 watts of usage, does that sound high? If I can't find and appliance that's causing it, could it be down to an electrical fault somewhere?

 

[littlespark]

If it’s at all feasible, turn off everything you can and see if the consumption is still high.
what sort of meter is it? Old spinning disk or flashing red light?
does your energy monitor correlate with your suppliers meter?

it could be a fault that needs investigated.
It could be a faulty meter.
It could be neighbours inadvertently tapped into your supply.

a mid terrace house could mean a looped supply...

can you post a photograph of the Main fuse, meter, fuseboard and any other equipment near the fuseboard.

 

[RapsterUK]

It's the old style spinning type with a modern fuse box. I'll be turning everything off today to try and isolate the issue, I presume a draw of 600-700 watts is high?

I've attached some pictures as requested, thank you for your quick reply and advice so far!

 

[radiohead]

Do you have any electric underfloor heating? In the bathroom for instance?
I've known a number of 'wrong high bills' which turned out to be an overlooked floor heating element left switched on. It's almost certainly not an electrical fault, a leakage of the magnitude to noticeably increase bills would quickly manifest itself either in tripping circuit breakers or a fire!

 

[Lucien Nunes]

With all load switched off a disc meter should stop completely, while an energy monitor should not log more than a few watts. A background load of 600W from small appliances is not impossible, but if there were 600W of load that could not be accounted for, that would be a symptom of something running from your supply that you do not know about. It would not realistically be a self-contained wiring fault, as it would be dissipating half as much heat as a toaster and therefore would have burnt out and probably tripped the breaker within minutes or seconds.

Littlespark's suggestion to compare the supplier's meter with your monitor is a good one. Some domestic-type energy monitors do not correctly read loads of low power-factor (often standby loads of small power supplies) and give vastly inflated readings. E.g. a 1kW heater will register 1kW as it is a resistive load and easy to measure accurately, but an induction hob control unit that takes 3W on standby might register 30W due to shortcomings in the monitor circuitry. By design, the disc meter will correctly measure all normal loads if it is working correctly.

Post croseed with radiohead, thinking along the same lines.

 

[littlespark]

600 700 watts is high when nothing is turned on. It’s basically a small heater on all the time.

turn the power off...and see if the disk continues to spin. If it stops, then turn the circuits back on one at a time to see what the cause is

another crossed post

 

[Darkwood]

Are the kids off school and are you furloughed..

What you are querying here is about £4-£6 a day which will add up but if you are all stuck at home with Plasma TV, Games consoles, Shower more frequently, more washing to do as school uniforms are put aside and a change of clothes everyday etc etc, you'll be surprised just how much boredom can cost a family stuck at home.

Do what we did as kids, get the monopoly out

 

[bill01803]

35kwh per day = 12775Kwh per year which is about what we used when we had 3 kids at home, only 1 left now down to about 8000kwh per year

 

[R-fur]

Years ago I was an installation inspector for the local electricity board. I used to get sent to investigate houses that had had a drastic reduction in consumption. The usual reason?
Daughter went to uni/got married.

 

[nicebutdim]

Years ago I was an installation inspector for the local electricity board. I used to get sent to investigate houses that had had a drastic reduction in consumption. The usual reason?
Daughter went to uni/got married.

There was a time when I suspected our eldest was in the habit of washing and drying one pair of jeans or one T-shirt several times a week, when no one else was at home, but could never prove it and the other half felt the electricity bills were acceptable.

Changing from a vented to heat pump dryer saw consistent savings of £20 each month - 1/5 of total consumption! He couldn't figure out how to dry small loads in the new machine and I wasn't going to tell him

A few years back he got a fancy job and his own place, which resulted in another huge drop in consumption. I've no idea why the OP is burning through more energy than expected, but it is definitely true that some kids are considerably more wasteful than others.

 

[Strima]

Turn off your main switch, the big red one, ad the meter should stop. If possible leave it off for a couple of hours to see if the meter moves.

Do you have a computer running 24/7? Bathroom fan on constantly? Any outside lights? Loft lights? Plinth heaters in the kitchen?

 

[radiohead]

There was a time when I suspected our eldest was in the habit of washing and drying one pair of jeans or one T-shirt several times a week, when no one else was at home, but could never prove it and the other half felt the electricity bills were acceptable.

Changing from a vented to heat pump dryer saw consistent savings of £20 each month - 1/5 of total consumption! He couldn't figure out how to dry small loads in the new machine and I wasn't going to tell him

A few years back he got a fancy job and his own place, which resulted in another huge drop in consumption. I've no idea why the OP is burning through more energy than expected, but it is definitely true that some kids are considerably more wasteful than others.

Would that be todays green-environmentally aware- save the planet generation by any chance?

 

[Bob Geldoff1234]

At night,when everyone is in bed and all lights are turned off,I use approx 150 watts through the night.This consists of fridge/freezers,tv's in standby,alarm panel,wireless doorbells,alexa,cctv cameras etc.It all adds up.

 

[nicebutdim]

Would that be todays green-environmentally aware- save the planet generation by any chance?

The very same.

Saving the planet by insisting on paper straws with their daily McDonalds.

 

[marconi]

Old fridges and freezers? Are these in a hot garage, outhouse or shed?

 

[UKMeterman]

Do you have any electric underfloor heating? In the bathroom for instance?
I've known a number of 'wrong high bills' which turned out to be an overlooked floor heating element left switched on. It's almost certainly not an electrical fault, a leakage of the magnitude to noticeably increase bills would quickly manifest itself either in tripping circuit breakers or a fire!

I have heard of a case of an earth fault in a outside shed, mixed with a TT installation caused a couple of amps to go to earth....

 

[radiohead]

I have heard of a case of an earth fault in a outside shed, mixed with a TT installation caused a couple of amps to go to earth....

Presumably if it was TT there was either no RCD or it was inoperative?

 

[UKMeterman]

Presumably if it was TT there was either no RCD or it was inoperative?

Voltage operated trip that was inopperattive.

 

[DefyG]

Bit off track but started a refurb on a semi and isolated all circuits to strip out, 2 days later the neighbour complained they'd lost their immersion heater since we started.
Must have been like it for years!

 

[freddo]

Must have been like it for years!

You'd think the neighbour would have kept their mouth shut!